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seriousficTitle: Duality
Fandom: Nolanverse Batman, Superman Returns
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,731
Characters/Pairings: Bruce Wayne, Barbara Gordon, General Zod, Talia Head, Selina Kyle
Previous Part: Chapter 22
Next Part: Chapter 24
Summary: As Bruce wonders if he’s doomed to the life he chose, Barbara accepts her destiny.
General Zod was finding life as a human a real challenge; and he loved it. He was like a hunter divesting himself of weaponry to face the prey in savagery. In a world of primates, he was the only true intellect. Ursa remained in the Phantom Zone and the son of Jor-El had been corrupted by human upbringing. But still Zod maneuvered himself into power. Lex Luthor enjoyed the reversal of their old standing too much to kill him, and Zod had spared himself other ravages most carefully. Luthor was too greedy for Kryptonian technology to offend him, ensuring Zod a most comfortable existence as he fed Luthor the crumbs of a superior culture.
It would be sufficient for a lesser being such as Ursa or Nod or another citizen of the late, great Krypton, but Zod was born to rule and conquer. The so-called golden age of peace on Krypton could not pacify him; nor could Luthor’s gilded cage. Nor could Luthor’s boorish tinkerers.
“Imbeciles,” he muttered coldly. “Unevolved morons. I don’t expect you to grasp the complexities of supremely advanced technology, but is the capacity to understand even your own simpleton language beyond you?”
The scientist was like all of his identical human ilk: assured beyond all reason of his supremacy in the universe. Just looking at his doughty, prattling face made Zod recoil. Actually knowing his name would no doubt induce vomiting. “Listen, Mr. Zod…”
“General Zod, ape-thing. I did not spend twenty years fighting the Clone Wars to be referred to by a neighborly epithet.”
“So be it, Jedi,” the scientist mumbled under his breath. Probably another of his interminable references to ‘popular culture.’ How the son of Jor-El hadn’t wiped them out for that alone, Zod would never know. “The specifications you outlined would cause a catastrophic systems failure. Are you sure you didn’t mistranslate…”
“By your understanding of physics. Your understanding is flawed. Why does this come as a surprise to you?”
“Now now, Zodie, play nice.” From behind, Lex clapped Zod playfully on the shoulders. “After all, it could get lonely being the last son of Krypton.”
“Then you have it?”
Lex took a dagger of Kryptonite from his pocket. Once, the only light had come from the computer screens and instrumentation of the control room. Now it was like phosphorous ivy had cannibalized the place. “The first of many. With a little fear-mongering, I’ll have enough Kryptonite to power an army of unstoppable soldiers to protect the Earth for all time from alien contamination, present company excluded of course. Not to mention they’ll, dare I say, take over the world.”
“And kill Superman?”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that. By then, Supes will be dead for so long that I’ll have worn grooves from dancing on his grave. First things first, though. Get the prototype operational. You know the consequences if we don’t get Superman dead by the time he arrives.”
“It will be done, Luthor.” Zod paused before blithely adding “ruler of Earth.”
“Sweet of you to say. Now if you’ll excuse me…” Lex tucked away the Kryptonite. “I have a pressing appointment in Gotham.”
***
Bruce drove into the setting sun for five minutes before he pulled the Batcycle over to the side of the road. He looked at himself in the rear-view mirror. His reflection wasn’t Batman. It was Bruce Wayne playing dress-up.
Alfred had said he had a choice. Maybe he did. Maybe he wasn’t fated to fight crime until he died. Were there days he hadn’t felt this drive? Before his parents died? With Rachel? He’d always thought it was a moot point, that he was too far gone to ever have a normal life. But he could try. His parents would want that, surely, more than they’d be proud of their only son becoming a vigilante.
He throttled up the Batcycle and headed home, the rear of the engine muted and subdued.
***
Talia mixed herself a mineral shake, watching as her secret ingredient turned the clear water a glowing green. “No, thank you Miss Minerva,” she said into the cell-phone cradled to her shoulder. “The antiquities you’ve found will be perfect for our Themysciran wing. I’ll wire your usual fee over first thing in the morning… alright, sooner.” There was a knock at the door to her office. It could only be one person at this time of night. “I’ll call you back.” She disconnected the call. “Come in.”
The door opened partway and Bruce poked his head in. “Am I a little late to be a well-wisher?”
“You bring any flowers?”
Bruce opened the door wider to reveal a bouquet.
“You’re right on time.”
Talia shoved her work into a half-full desk drawer before tip-toeing through the clutter to Bruce. The flowers she sniffed orgasmically before setting on a bureau. Then she saw a bald head scowling through the transom.
“I hope Ubu didn’t give you any trouble.”
“Oh, chrome-dome back there? He’s a pussycat.”
“I’ve given him standing orders to let in any handsome millionaires who come my way.” She picked up a flashlight. “Shall we?”
“A private tour, Doctor?”
“You’d be surprised how many things you miss in the light.”
“Lead on.”
The museum was half-lit, with shadows flowing over everything. Talia’s flashlights cast a solid cone of light through the air. Some bluish light seeped in through windows and skylights, but for the most part it was dark enough for Bruce’s hand to be a stranger to him.
“This place gets a little creepy at night, huh?”
Talia walked closer to him. “Don’t worry, I won’t let anything get you.”
The added proximity made him sweat. Bruce took off his topcoat and let the night air cool him. She walked him through the Egyptian section, showing him Bast perfume jars, one of Ra’s sun disks.
“No mummies?” he asked.
“We keep them with the werewolf furs. May I ask you something, Mr. Wayne?”
“Only if you call me Bruce.”
“Call me Talia and it’s a deal.” She stopped. “What are you doing here?”
Bruce half-grinned. “What, you’ve never woken up with a hankering for Egyptology?”
“We had that amazing dance and then I was in the hospital… you visit once and then you disappear… was I the only one who felt a connection there?”
Bruce stopped. Talia swung around to point her flashlight at him, but he grabbed her wrist, keeping his face sheathed in darkness. “You weren’t,” he said, his voice suddenly low. Dangerous. “For the longest time, I’ve had this… compulsion in me. When I see people doing bad things, I want to—hurt them. It goes away when I’m with you.”
“And you want it to go away?”
“Isn’t that what you do with compulsions? Lock them away where they can’t hurt anyone?”
“Can’t you afford a therapist?”
“I don’t want a therapist.” Bruce changed tacks, his hand on her wrist suddenly doing more than holding the flashlight still. “Is it alright if I turn off the light?” His thumb was sliding over her fingernail where it was poised on the flashlight’s switch.
“Depends. I’ve known a lot of men who became a different person in the dark.”
He just looked at her out of the shadows. “Right now, I’m not sure who I’d become.”
She turned off the light.
Bruce could still see well enough… an outline, the occasional flash of eyes catching light… but it still came as a surprise when she touched him. Her hand paused at his brow, fingers working into the furrow there, before moving downward. Along his cheek. Over his chin. Finding the scars managed by make-up, the places where his jaw had reknitted itself. The pads of her fingers swished over his lips, flicking them down. Fingernails ghosted over his neck, his stomach.
“Someone molded you,” she said, her hand pressed hard against his chest. “He did a good job.”
“I play a lot of tennis.”
“Don’t talk.” He felt her breath down his collar. “Not in that voice.
With her lips on his something shifted, clicked into place. His brain got the right dose of endomorphins, his body chemistry balanced out, he wasn’t afraid anymore.
Then he saw a form, a female form, descending on a zip-line like gravity had only a passing familiarity to her. She was wound around her rope, arms and elbows, with her strange headgear giving her head a feline silhouette. She saw him seeing her.
“Sorry, am I interrupting something?”
“Thief!” Talia cried.
“Right in one. Sorry, gorgeous, two’s company, three’s a ménage a trois.”
She smashed open the display case she’d been descending on, grabbed the jewel inside, and flew upward as the alarm sang. Bruce saw the flicker of her rope coming undone through the skylight against the moon, like a swishing cat’s tail.
“I’ll go for help!” he said to Talia, running for the exfiltration point he’d eyeballed the moment he set foot in the hall. In a moment, he was outside and to the limo, wishing he had spent more time preparing excuses.
Alfred, at the wheel, looked up from his trashy romance novels. “Do you need another breath mint, sir? Or… protection?”
“Costume.”
“Right away, sir.”
***
It hadn’t taken much work for Barbara to convert her Blackberry into a police scanner. She flipped it on and listened for crimes-in-progress. Most everything she heard was out of her range or out of her league. Then the perfect call came. 415. Burglary. She cast out her line and took another swing.
This, she could get used to.
***
Alfred kept the cat burglar in sight (The cat burglar was easy to follow. Her movements were flashy, cocky, arrogant in her invincibility.) while Bruce changed, the metamorphosis coming with lycanthropic ease. His sanctuary had been invaded. The intruder would pay dearly for that.
They stopped in a dark alley and Batman fired a cable through the open sunroof. An instant later he was reeled in, up amidst the gargoyles. He spotted her, black-clothed, nearly invisible. The moonlight glinted off the jewel she had stolen and the razor-tipped fingers it was held in. With moonbeams shining through it, it resembled nothing so much as a glowing cat’s eye.
The thief’s spine stiffened and for a second he thought he’d been detected. But then she relaxed with feline serenity, slinking along the edge of the parapet. She walked like women didn’t walk anymore, hips swaying, spine straight. She orbited a coiled whip around her right hand like a keychain. Maybe he could hold off on arresting her. If he followed her back to her hide-out, there might be other loot he could recover, associates he could arrest. It was the logical thing to do.
The cat burglar continued her runway strut, suddenly doing handsprings forward, backflips toward him, climaxing in a handstand with her legs parted to either side like butterfly wings.
“Enjoying the show?” she asked before righting herself, flipping sideways to land on a clothesline between buildings. Batman stalked to the edge of the roof to watch her tightrope-walk across the gap, hanging clothes stirred up by the wind to billow like bursts of flame.
“You have something that doesn’t belong to you.”
“Countless men’s hearts?”
“The gem.”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re excruciatingly literal-minded?” She vaulted onto the opposite roof.
Batman stepped up onto the parapet, unfurling a Batarang. “Don’t think I won’t hit a woman.”
“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.” She let her whip unspool off the rooftop. “The name’s Catwoman.”
“I didn’t ask.”
And that was when Batgirl swung onto the water tower perpendicular to them, stumbling on her dismount. “Stop right there, lawbreaker!”
“Is she talking to you or me?” Catwoman asked Batman.
“Stay out of this! She’s mine,” he ordered the newcomer.
“I don’t see your name on her.”
“Do you need a moment?” Catwoman asked solicitously.
They moved simultaneously. Batman flung his weapon, Catwoman caught the Batarang with her whip and cracked it at Batgirl. Barbara ducked. The Batarang cut off one of her horns. “Hey! What’s wrong with you!?”
Catwoman ran for it. Batman took a running leap off his roof, glided to hers, and gave chase. Batgirl looked around for a moment, saw a ladder, slid down it, and followed his billowing cape.
Catwoman jumped into open air, snagging a cornice with her bullwhip. Knees bunched and torso leaned back, she slid through an open apartment window. Batman crashed through same. Shards of glass splayed out in front of him. Batgirl grabbed the windowsill and pulled herself in, apologizing to the tenants.
She followed the trail of destruction into the hallway, where Catwoman vaulted over a food cart that Batman bulldozed through. Barbara sidestepped the overturned mess into the stairwell, where Bat and Cat were bouncing up the atrium of the stairs like free runners. Batgirl took the more traditional route. Who knew that Stairmaster could count as combat training?
When she got to the top, the door had been kicked in. On the rooftop, Batman had Catwoman pinned to a wall. Her legs were snapping out like livewires, kneeing him in the midsection and stomping at his boots. As Batgirl watched, Catwoman wound her legs around him and squeezed his ribs between her muscular thighs. He jabbed at her nerve clusters, but Catwoman snaked away from the attacks. Her headbutt drove him back a few steps; her forehead lingered against his, a smirk on her lips.
Batgirl rushed forward to help, screaming a battle cry. Catwoman’s hand rocketed out to her throat, used Batgirl as a handhold to slam Batman to the ground. Batgirl joined him, thrown down on top of her idol like an anvil on a cartoon cat. For a moment she was lying on top of him, face to face. His breath smelled… minty?
“Amateur,” he spat as he stood up, dumping her on her ass.
Catwoman had Cheshired herself to a window-washing platform on a neighboring skyscraper. Batman drew his grapple-gun and fired a line to the top of the skyscraper.
Batgirl had the next best thing: A firecracker tied to a grappling hook. It worked beyond wildest expectations, which was that it would blow up in her hand. She wound the rope around her arm.
“Don’t!” the Batman shouted at her before he swung over to the face of the building like a repeller.
“You are not the boss of me!” She dived.
He made a minute movement and a Batarang scissored through her line. Suddenly, Barbara was intimately aware of the difference between falling and freefalling. Chiefly, freefalling was a lot scarier. She screamed her lungs out all the way down, or at least until Batman scooped her up in his thick black arms.
“Go limp!” he barked. “Wrap your arms tightly around my neck.”
She did, trying to forget how close the ground had looked the last time she’d opened her eyes. With a muted bzzzt! and the sharp smell of ozone in her nostrils like smelling salt, she was weightless.
A weirdly disjointed moment followed as gravity flowed uphill, pulling at her until she was settled. Against Batman. She was literally hanging off him, dangling by the same lifeline, enfolded in Dracula’s cape just before he penetrated her… bit her, bit her. Barbara felt lightheaded. Could he feel her jackhammer heartbeat through her thin top and, oh God, the least lift-y and separate-y bra in fashion? Because she could feel his, subtle as a man buried alive and tapping on his coffin, the sound traveling through six feet of body armor. Goddamn, she hoped he didn’t have an animal sense of smell.
“So, uh…” she licked her very dry lips. “Hang out here often?”
Batman gave her the same look her sense of mortification and profound embarrassment would give her if it could leap out of her skull.
“You just let a dangerous criminal escape and you’re making jokes?”
She tried to turn away from him without falling to her death, as tempting as the prospect was. “It was more of a quip than a… hey, I let her get away? I’m not the one who decided to have some target practice with my line!”
“It wasn’t elastic,” he explained as if to a child (which, strictly speaking…) “If you’d used that at the rate of descent you had, you would’ve ripped your arm out of its socket.”
“Oh.” Batgirl thrust her chin out. “Well, now I know that.”
“Do me a favor.”
“Anything!”
“Go home and don’t put on this ugly suit again. I don’t have time for amateur hour.”
“My suit is awesome!” Great retort, Babs, you’re making the Lincoln-Douglas debates run for the hills. “Who put you in charge of the superhero police, anyway?”
Batman’s scowl deepened, which had seemed impossible for a few blissful seconds ago. “My city, my rules.”
“I don’t remember electing you Bat-Mayor either. I’m going to keep being Batgirl and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Batman reached into his utility belt and took out a small capsule.
“What’s that?”
“Sleeping gas.”
“Oh, it’s sleeping gas.” He cracked it under her nose. “Hey--!”
***
Alfred wasn’t surprised when Bruce returned to the car and told him to drive for the cave. He was surprised to see a fetching young lady in his employer’s arms… especially one wearing a Halloween costume.
“Perhaps I’ve been negligent in your education, Master Bruce, but it is frowned upon in polite society to engage one woman for an evening and return with another.”
If Alfred ever needed evidence of Bruce Wayne’s humorlessness, he could’ve taken a picture of that moment in time. “I’m saving her life.”
“My word!” Alfred leaned over the seat to look for injuries. “Shall I swing by the emergency room?”
“She’s not injured. Not yet.” Bruce buckled her safety belt. “Not ever.”
***
Bruce waited until they were in the cave, far from prying eyes, to unmask her. The mask came off like a bandage whose wound had healed, dribbling red hair as it came loose. She stirred once as it left her face, making Bruce feel abashed, but he persisted. Underneath was a face that belonged on a beach, a dust jacket, a magazine cover. The same face he’d seen near tears a week ago, now as set and strong as the mask she wore. Jim Gordon’s little girl.
“No. Not to him.” Bruce stumbled back, pulling off his mask and throwing it into the shadows. “Jim’s innocent!”
”What’s wrong, sir?” Alfred asked, hurrying to his side.
“Barbara. It’s Barbara. Jim’s daughter. Everything he does is to build her a better future. And now she’s throwing it all away.”
Alfred nodded sagely and turned away. “It wouldn’t be the first time potential’s been squandered,” he commented as he went about his chores. They had guests over and as insane as his work had become, he still wouldn’t present a dirty house to a guest.
“Not now, Alfred.”
Alfred turned, incensed by the giant computer he’d been polishing, by all of the talismans of Bruce Wayne’s life contained in this drafty cave. “Right now! If you’re going to condemn someone, make sure it’s not the bloke you face in the mirror each morning.”
“If I let her get hurt, I won’t be able to look in the mirror.”
“Then you’ll know how I feel every time I think of your parents… and what they expected at me.” Alfred faltered at the sudden show of emotion. He took a stop closer before detouring into the shadows to pick up the Batman’s mask. “I trust you’ll still be needing this?”
“A little while longer.”
***
Barbara woke up slow. There was a dripping and a weird breathing noise and it turned out that was the cave, she was in a cave. She sat up, feeling for her mask. Nowhere. Kinda scary how she was able to notice its absence so fast.
Batman was in front of her, surreptitiously adjusting his mask. He looked… big. Still just as big as the day he’d rescued her.
“Is this your sex dungeon?” she asked him, leaping off the exam table she’d been lying on. “Did you take me to your sex dungeon?”
“I don’t have a sex dungeon,” he assured her.
“Then it’s your…” She looked around some more. It was filled with bat paraphernalia, like Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum. But there was a unity there, like they were all reflecting the same psyche. Schizophrenic, sure, but an ethos of sorts… “Bat… cave?”
“Batcave.” Batman looked around, as if to make sure they were in a cave. “You can go back to calling it a sex dungeon.”
“No, Batcave, that’s catchy…” She found her mask on a stalagmite and pulled it on, quickly securing it. “Is this the part where you sing The Music of the Night to me?”
“I’m tone-deaf.”
“And even if he weren’t,” came a voice, British accent, old and dignified, “Andrew Lloyd Webber? I think not.”
Barbara turned to see… a butler. Bringing her lemonade. Yeah… “And what’s your story, Jeeves? Does every superhero have a dignified English butler?”
“Yes. I meet up with Superman’s butler every Friday for tea and crumpets.”
“Okay, okay, sure…” Barbara nodded frantically and pointed at both in turn. “Scourge of evil… his butler… got it. So is this the point where I go through an initiation ritual, swear an oath, get cybernetic implants…”
“You can go home. And study.”
“Study… bat-criminology?”
“Regular criminology would be just fine, dear,” the butler said. “Lemonade? I’m told the sleep-gas can be a tad dehydrating.”
“I am feeling a bit parched,” Barbara replied, reaching for a glass. “Thanks.” She drank. “This is great. Do you use real lemons?”
“Freshly squeezed, ma’am.”
“Alfred, why don’t you attend to another duty?” Batman said shortly.
Alfred nodded stiffly and bustled off, leaving her alone with him. Barbara abashedly pulled her cape tightly around herself.
“Do you know where we are?”
Barbara shook her head.
“This is the medical bay. The butler is also a medic.” He flipped a switch, lighting up an X-ray sheet. “These are bones I’ve broken.” He picked up a jar full of deformed metal, like coins left on a train track. “These are bullets and shrapnel he’s pulled out of me.” He opened a small refrigerator. Inside were rows and rows of red sacks. “This is the blood we use for transfusions. We replenish it twice a month.” He slammed the door shut. “I know the appeal this lifestyle has. But it’s not for you. If you want to help Gotham, be a cop.”
Barbara snorted. “My dad won’t let me,” she said peevishly.
“I’m not offering you choices here. Put the costume away or I’ll tell your father who you really are.”
Batgirl clenched her teeth. “Do that, I’ll tell him who you are.”
“You have no idea who I am.”
“You’re six foot two, you live in a cave which must be documented, you have an English butler named Alfred, and you have a Waynetech Delphi-class supercomputer. Only fourteen of those exist and most of them are running small countries. How long would it take you to solve this mystery, Sherlock?”
Batman stared at her. She would’ve expected a reaction. It was kind of creepy, actually.
“You’re not gonna talk me out of this. You want to take responsibility, take responsibility for my training. I’ll stay off the streets until you think I’m ready, I’ll follow any order you give. Just let me—you know how my father is. You helped make him a target. Let me help keep him safe. Please. You don’t know what it’s like to look at your mother and know she’s wondering if her husband will come home.”
Batman was motionless, but he did seem to sway, as if the cold draft was pressing on him. He took out another capsule.
“You’ll wake up at home. I’ll have an answer for you then.”
***
Barbara slept. She did it with her arms wrapped around herself, hair lying across her face and stirring with each breath.
“She’s not like me,” Bruce said. “She’s an innocent. I’m supposed to be protecting people like her.”
Alfred finished off her glass of lemonade, then washed it out in the sink. “Even the innocent have a right to defend themselves. You take that away, you’re no longer a guardian, you’re a dictator.”
“But it’s my mission. I took it on so people like her wouldn’t have to.”
“It’s the mission of everyone who loves peace and loathes evil. You must’ve known that to truly win back Gotham, at some point the Batman has to stop being a legend and start being a movement.”
Bruce picked up Batgirl’s mask, feeling out its rough homemade contours. Then he pulled it over her face, brushing the hair out of its way. “I’ll train her. I’ll work her so hard that she’ll get bruises just hearing the word Batgirl.”
“And if that doesn’t discourage her?”
Bruce pressed a Batarang into Barbara’s hand and wrapped her fingers around it. “Then I start a movement.”
***
Barbara woke up slow. It was all a dream… or was it? she though obligingly as she saw her costume on under the covers, a Batarang in her hand. There was a note attached to it. It read: ‘Practice makes perfect.’
“YES!”
Someone knocked at the door, followed a half-second later by her father barging in anyway. That was just enough time for Barbara to whip her mask off and pull the covers up to her chin. “Daddy? You’re interrupting my beauty sleep.”
“Sorry, angel. Got home late and I didn’t know if you were still up.”
“Just a little good old-fashioned insomnia.” She pulled her gloves off under the sheets and brought her hands up to bunch up her pillows. “So what’s up?”
“Nothing much. Your mother was straightening up your room when your cell-phone rang.”
Oh no.
“She picked it up to tell whoever was calling that you weren’t home. There was a boy she didn’t recognize asking for you. When she asked who was calling, he hung up.”
“That is weird. Maybe he thought he had a wrong number,” Barbara suggested.
Her father sat down at the foot of her bed, cinching the sheets and inadvertently exposing her yellow boots. She kicked them off, then pulled them under the covers.
“Barbara, I know you’ve reached that age where you’re interested in boys and boys are… interested in you.”
Barbara chuckled. “Dad, that happened a while back.”
His eyes went wide. “Which, the you interested in boys or the boys interested in—never mind. I also know you haven’t been lucky in love.”
“Dad!”
“Simple fact, Barbara. But I hope that if you found a boy who respected you and cared about you, you’d feel comfortable sharing that… great news with your mother and I.”
”Yeah, of course… if it was serious.”
Gordon tilted his head to one side. “Serious?”
“You know… if we’d been on a few dates, if we had good chemistry…”
“Sure, sure… just… how far is ‘serious’, basewise?”
“Dad!”
“Second base? It’s second base, isn’t it? This is the 21st century, I can live with second base.”
“Serious is not any base! Serious is…” she smiled a little. “Serious is someone I really like and think I might want to spend the rest of my life with.”
Gordon smiled. “That’s nice, hon.” He frowned. “Because there aren’t any bases on a relationship that isn’t serious, right?”
“Dad, you are seriously killing me.”
“The hitter has balls coming his way, but he just keeps striking out. He is going back to the dugout and he is getting traded to another team next fall.”
“Dad, no one is even playing. The game is called on account of rain.” And one team forfeited.
“That’s good. Because if someone tried to steal home, I might just have to beat them with a baseball bat… that’s not a metaphor.” He patted her stomach, accidentally feeling her utility belt.
“Oh, I bought one of those new belted nightgowns,” Barbara explained quickly. “They’re all the rage!”
“No wonder you have insomnia.”
He left, finally, but Barbara didn’t want to take off her costume. She wanted to sleep in it, bathe in it, kiss Dick in it. She was a superhero.
Fandom: Nolanverse Batman, Superman Returns
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,731
Characters/Pairings: Bruce Wayne, Barbara Gordon, General Zod, Talia Head, Selina Kyle
Previous Part: Chapter 22
Next Part: Chapter 24
Summary: As Bruce wonders if he’s doomed to the life he chose, Barbara accepts her destiny.
General Zod was finding life as a human a real challenge; and he loved it. He was like a hunter divesting himself of weaponry to face the prey in savagery. In a world of primates, he was the only true intellect. Ursa remained in the Phantom Zone and the son of Jor-El had been corrupted by human upbringing. But still Zod maneuvered himself into power. Lex Luthor enjoyed the reversal of their old standing too much to kill him, and Zod had spared himself other ravages most carefully. Luthor was too greedy for Kryptonian technology to offend him, ensuring Zod a most comfortable existence as he fed Luthor the crumbs of a superior culture.
It would be sufficient for a lesser being such as Ursa or Nod or another citizen of the late, great Krypton, but Zod was born to rule and conquer. The so-called golden age of peace on Krypton could not pacify him; nor could Luthor’s gilded cage. Nor could Luthor’s boorish tinkerers.
“Imbeciles,” he muttered coldly. “Unevolved morons. I don’t expect you to grasp the complexities of supremely advanced technology, but is the capacity to understand even your own simpleton language beyond you?”
The scientist was like all of his identical human ilk: assured beyond all reason of his supremacy in the universe. Just looking at his doughty, prattling face made Zod recoil. Actually knowing his name would no doubt induce vomiting. “Listen, Mr. Zod…”
“General Zod, ape-thing. I did not spend twenty years fighting the Clone Wars to be referred to by a neighborly epithet.”
“So be it, Jedi,” the scientist mumbled under his breath. Probably another of his interminable references to ‘popular culture.’ How the son of Jor-El hadn’t wiped them out for that alone, Zod would never know. “The specifications you outlined would cause a catastrophic systems failure. Are you sure you didn’t mistranslate…”
“By your understanding of physics. Your understanding is flawed. Why does this come as a surprise to you?”
“Now now, Zodie, play nice.” From behind, Lex clapped Zod playfully on the shoulders. “After all, it could get lonely being the last son of Krypton.”
“Then you have it?”
Lex took a dagger of Kryptonite from his pocket. Once, the only light had come from the computer screens and instrumentation of the control room. Now it was like phosphorous ivy had cannibalized the place. “The first of many. With a little fear-mongering, I’ll have enough Kryptonite to power an army of unstoppable soldiers to protect the Earth for all time from alien contamination, present company excluded of course. Not to mention they’ll, dare I say, take over the world.”
“And kill Superman?”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that. By then, Supes will be dead for so long that I’ll have worn grooves from dancing on his grave. First things first, though. Get the prototype operational. You know the consequences if we don’t get Superman dead by the time he arrives.”
“It will be done, Luthor.” Zod paused before blithely adding “ruler of Earth.”
“Sweet of you to say. Now if you’ll excuse me…” Lex tucked away the Kryptonite. “I have a pressing appointment in Gotham.”
***
Bruce drove into the setting sun for five minutes before he pulled the Batcycle over to the side of the road. He looked at himself in the rear-view mirror. His reflection wasn’t Batman. It was Bruce Wayne playing dress-up.
Alfred had said he had a choice. Maybe he did. Maybe he wasn’t fated to fight crime until he died. Were there days he hadn’t felt this drive? Before his parents died? With Rachel? He’d always thought it was a moot point, that he was too far gone to ever have a normal life. But he could try. His parents would want that, surely, more than they’d be proud of their only son becoming a vigilante.
He throttled up the Batcycle and headed home, the rear of the engine muted and subdued.
***
Talia mixed herself a mineral shake, watching as her secret ingredient turned the clear water a glowing green. “No, thank you Miss Minerva,” she said into the cell-phone cradled to her shoulder. “The antiquities you’ve found will be perfect for our Themysciran wing. I’ll wire your usual fee over first thing in the morning… alright, sooner.” There was a knock at the door to her office. It could only be one person at this time of night. “I’ll call you back.” She disconnected the call. “Come in.”
The door opened partway and Bruce poked his head in. “Am I a little late to be a well-wisher?”
“You bring any flowers?”
Bruce opened the door wider to reveal a bouquet.
“You’re right on time.”
Talia shoved her work into a half-full desk drawer before tip-toeing through the clutter to Bruce. The flowers she sniffed orgasmically before setting on a bureau. Then she saw a bald head scowling through the transom.
“I hope Ubu didn’t give you any trouble.”
“Oh, chrome-dome back there? He’s a pussycat.”
“I’ve given him standing orders to let in any handsome millionaires who come my way.” She picked up a flashlight. “Shall we?”
“A private tour, Doctor?”
“You’d be surprised how many things you miss in the light.”
“Lead on.”
The museum was half-lit, with shadows flowing over everything. Talia’s flashlights cast a solid cone of light through the air. Some bluish light seeped in through windows and skylights, but for the most part it was dark enough for Bruce’s hand to be a stranger to him.
“This place gets a little creepy at night, huh?”
Talia walked closer to him. “Don’t worry, I won’t let anything get you.”
The added proximity made him sweat. Bruce took off his topcoat and let the night air cool him. She walked him through the Egyptian section, showing him Bast perfume jars, one of Ra’s sun disks.
“No mummies?” he asked.
“We keep them with the werewolf furs. May I ask you something, Mr. Wayne?”
“Only if you call me Bruce.”
“Call me Talia and it’s a deal.” She stopped. “What are you doing here?”
Bruce half-grinned. “What, you’ve never woken up with a hankering for Egyptology?”
“We had that amazing dance and then I was in the hospital… you visit once and then you disappear… was I the only one who felt a connection there?”
Bruce stopped. Talia swung around to point her flashlight at him, but he grabbed her wrist, keeping his face sheathed in darkness. “You weren’t,” he said, his voice suddenly low. Dangerous. “For the longest time, I’ve had this… compulsion in me. When I see people doing bad things, I want to—hurt them. It goes away when I’m with you.”
“And you want it to go away?”
“Isn’t that what you do with compulsions? Lock them away where they can’t hurt anyone?”
“Can’t you afford a therapist?”
“I don’t want a therapist.” Bruce changed tacks, his hand on her wrist suddenly doing more than holding the flashlight still. “Is it alright if I turn off the light?” His thumb was sliding over her fingernail where it was poised on the flashlight’s switch.
“Depends. I’ve known a lot of men who became a different person in the dark.”
He just looked at her out of the shadows. “Right now, I’m not sure who I’d become.”
She turned off the light.
Bruce could still see well enough… an outline, the occasional flash of eyes catching light… but it still came as a surprise when she touched him. Her hand paused at his brow, fingers working into the furrow there, before moving downward. Along his cheek. Over his chin. Finding the scars managed by make-up, the places where his jaw had reknitted itself. The pads of her fingers swished over his lips, flicking them down. Fingernails ghosted over his neck, his stomach.
“Someone molded you,” she said, her hand pressed hard against his chest. “He did a good job.”
“I play a lot of tennis.”
“Don’t talk.” He felt her breath down his collar. “Not in that voice.
With her lips on his something shifted, clicked into place. His brain got the right dose of endomorphins, his body chemistry balanced out, he wasn’t afraid anymore.
Then he saw a form, a female form, descending on a zip-line like gravity had only a passing familiarity to her. She was wound around her rope, arms and elbows, with her strange headgear giving her head a feline silhouette. She saw him seeing her.
“Sorry, am I interrupting something?”
“Thief!” Talia cried.
“Right in one. Sorry, gorgeous, two’s company, three’s a ménage a trois.”
She smashed open the display case she’d been descending on, grabbed the jewel inside, and flew upward as the alarm sang. Bruce saw the flicker of her rope coming undone through the skylight against the moon, like a swishing cat’s tail.
“I’ll go for help!” he said to Talia, running for the exfiltration point he’d eyeballed the moment he set foot in the hall. In a moment, he was outside and to the limo, wishing he had spent more time preparing excuses.
Alfred, at the wheel, looked up from his trashy romance novels. “Do you need another breath mint, sir? Or… protection?”
“Costume.”
“Right away, sir.”
***
It hadn’t taken much work for Barbara to convert her Blackberry into a police scanner. She flipped it on and listened for crimes-in-progress. Most everything she heard was out of her range or out of her league. Then the perfect call came. 415. Burglary. She cast out her line and took another swing.
This, she could get used to.
***
Alfred kept the cat burglar in sight (The cat burglar was easy to follow. Her movements were flashy, cocky, arrogant in her invincibility.) while Bruce changed, the metamorphosis coming with lycanthropic ease. His sanctuary had been invaded. The intruder would pay dearly for that.
They stopped in a dark alley and Batman fired a cable through the open sunroof. An instant later he was reeled in, up amidst the gargoyles. He spotted her, black-clothed, nearly invisible. The moonlight glinted off the jewel she had stolen and the razor-tipped fingers it was held in. With moonbeams shining through it, it resembled nothing so much as a glowing cat’s eye.
The thief’s spine stiffened and for a second he thought he’d been detected. But then she relaxed with feline serenity, slinking along the edge of the parapet. She walked like women didn’t walk anymore, hips swaying, spine straight. She orbited a coiled whip around her right hand like a keychain. Maybe he could hold off on arresting her. If he followed her back to her hide-out, there might be other loot he could recover, associates he could arrest. It was the logical thing to do.
The cat burglar continued her runway strut, suddenly doing handsprings forward, backflips toward him, climaxing in a handstand with her legs parted to either side like butterfly wings.
“Enjoying the show?” she asked before righting herself, flipping sideways to land on a clothesline between buildings. Batman stalked to the edge of the roof to watch her tightrope-walk across the gap, hanging clothes stirred up by the wind to billow like bursts of flame.
“You have something that doesn’t belong to you.”
“Countless men’s hearts?”
“The gem.”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re excruciatingly literal-minded?” She vaulted onto the opposite roof.
Batman stepped up onto the parapet, unfurling a Batarang. “Don’t think I won’t hit a woman.”
“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.” She let her whip unspool off the rooftop. “The name’s Catwoman.”
“I didn’t ask.”
And that was when Batgirl swung onto the water tower perpendicular to them, stumbling on her dismount. “Stop right there, lawbreaker!”
“Is she talking to you or me?” Catwoman asked Batman.
“Stay out of this! She’s mine,” he ordered the newcomer.
“I don’t see your name on her.”
“Do you need a moment?” Catwoman asked solicitously.
They moved simultaneously. Batman flung his weapon, Catwoman caught the Batarang with her whip and cracked it at Batgirl. Barbara ducked. The Batarang cut off one of her horns. “Hey! What’s wrong with you!?”
Catwoman ran for it. Batman took a running leap off his roof, glided to hers, and gave chase. Batgirl looked around for a moment, saw a ladder, slid down it, and followed his billowing cape.
Catwoman jumped into open air, snagging a cornice with her bullwhip. Knees bunched and torso leaned back, she slid through an open apartment window. Batman crashed through same. Shards of glass splayed out in front of him. Batgirl grabbed the windowsill and pulled herself in, apologizing to the tenants.
She followed the trail of destruction into the hallway, where Catwoman vaulted over a food cart that Batman bulldozed through. Barbara sidestepped the overturned mess into the stairwell, where Bat and Cat were bouncing up the atrium of the stairs like free runners. Batgirl took the more traditional route. Who knew that Stairmaster could count as combat training?
When she got to the top, the door had been kicked in. On the rooftop, Batman had Catwoman pinned to a wall. Her legs were snapping out like livewires, kneeing him in the midsection and stomping at his boots. As Batgirl watched, Catwoman wound her legs around him and squeezed his ribs between her muscular thighs. He jabbed at her nerve clusters, but Catwoman snaked away from the attacks. Her headbutt drove him back a few steps; her forehead lingered against his, a smirk on her lips.
Batgirl rushed forward to help, screaming a battle cry. Catwoman’s hand rocketed out to her throat, used Batgirl as a handhold to slam Batman to the ground. Batgirl joined him, thrown down on top of her idol like an anvil on a cartoon cat. For a moment she was lying on top of him, face to face. His breath smelled… minty?
“Amateur,” he spat as he stood up, dumping her on her ass.
Catwoman had Cheshired herself to a window-washing platform on a neighboring skyscraper. Batman drew his grapple-gun and fired a line to the top of the skyscraper.
Batgirl had the next best thing: A firecracker tied to a grappling hook. It worked beyond wildest expectations, which was that it would blow up in her hand. She wound the rope around her arm.
“Don’t!” the Batman shouted at her before he swung over to the face of the building like a repeller.
“You are not the boss of me!” She dived.
He made a minute movement and a Batarang scissored through her line. Suddenly, Barbara was intimately aware of the difference between falling and freefalling. Chiefly, freefalling was a lot scarier. She screamed her lungs out all the way down, or at least until Batman scooped her up in his thick black arms.
“Go limp!” he barked. “Wrap your arms tightly around my neck.”
She did, trying to forget how close the ground had looked the last time she’d opened her eyes. With a muted bzzzt! and the sharp smell of ozone in her nostrils like smelling salt, she was weightless.
A weirdly disjointed moment followed as gravity flowed uphill, pulling at her until she was settled. Against Batman. She was literally hanging off him, dangling by the same lifeline, enfolded in Dracula’s cape just before he penetrated her… bit her, bit her. Barbara felt lightheaded. Could he feel her jackhammer heartbeat through her thin top and, oh God, the least lift-y and separate-y bra in fashion? Because she could feel his, subtle as a man buried alive and tapping on his coffin, the sound traveling through six feet of body armor. Goddamn, she hoped he didn’t have an animal sense of smell.
“So, uh…” she licked her very dry lips. “Hang out here often?”
Batman gave her the same look her sense of mortification and profound embarrassment would give her if it could leap out of her skull.
“You just let a dangerous criminal escape and you’re making jokes?”
She tried to turn away from him without falling to her death, as tempting as the prospect was. “It was more of a quip than a… hey, I let her get away? I’m not the one who decided to have some target practice with my line!”
“It wasn’t elastic,” he explained as if to a child (which, strictly speaking…) “If you’d used that at the rate of descent you had, you would’ve ripped your arm out of its socket.”
“Oh.” Batgirl thrust her chin out. “Well, now I know that.”
“Do me a favor.”
“Anything!”
“Go home and don’t put on this ugly suit again. I don’t have time for amateur hour.”
“My suit is awesome!” Great retort, Babs, you’re making the Lincoln-Douglas debates run for the hills. “Who put you in charge of the superhero police, anyway?”
Batman’s scowl deepened, which had seemed impossible for a few blissful seconds ago. “My city, my rules.”
“I don’t remember electing you Bat-Mayor either. I’m going to keep being Batgirl and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Batman reached into his utility belt and took out a small capsule.
“What’s that?”
“Sleeping gas.”
“Oh, it’s sleeping gas.” He cracked it under her nose. “Hey--!”
***
Alfred wasn’t surprised when Bruce returned to the car and told him to drive for the cave. He was surprised to see a fetching young lady in his employer’s arms… especially one wearing a Halloween costume.
“Perhaps I’ve been negligent in your education, Master Bruce, but it is frowned upon in polite society to engage one woman for an evening and return with another.”
If Alfred ever needed evidence of Bruce Wayne’s humorlessness, he could’ve taken a picture of that moment in time. “I’m saving her life.”
“My word!” Alfred leaned over the seat to look for injuries. “Shall I swing by the emergency room?”
“She’s not injured. Not yet.” Bruce buckled her safety belt. “Not ever.”
***
Bruce waited until they were in the cave, far from prying eyes, to unmask her. The mask came off like a bandage whose wound had healed, dribbling red hair as it came loose. She stirred once as it left her face, making Bruce feel abashed, but he persisted. Underneath was a face that belonged on a beach, a dust jacket, a magazine cover. The same face he’d seen near tears a week ago, now as set and strong as the mask she wore. Jim Gordon’s little girl.
“No. Not to him.” Bruce stumbled back, pulling off his mask and throwing it into the shadows. “Jim’s innocent!”
”What’s wrong, sir?” Alfred asked, hurrying to his side.
“Barbara. It’s Barbara. Jim’s daughter. Everything he does is to build her a better future. And now she’s throwing it all away.”
Alfred nodded sagely and turned away. “It wouldn’t be the first time potential’s been squandered,” he commented as he went about his chores. They had guests over and as insane as his work had become, he still wouldn’t present a dirty house to a guest.
“Not now, Alfred.”
Alfred turned, incensed by the giant computer he’d been polishing, by all of the talismans of Bruce Wayne’s life contained in this drafty cave. “Right now! If you’re going to condemn someone, make sure it’s not the bloke you face in the mirror each morning.”
“If I let her get hurt, I won’t be able to look in the mirror.”
“Then you’ll know how I feel every time I think of your parents… and what they expected at me.” Alfred faltered at the sudden show of emotion. He took a stop closer before detouring into the shadows to pick up the Batman’s mask. “I trust you’ll still be needing this?”
“A little while longer.”
***
Barbara woke up slow. There was a dripping and a weird breathing noise and it turned out that was the cave, she was in a cave. She sat up, feeling for her mask. Nowhere. Kinda scary how she was able to notice its absence so fast.
Batman was in front of her, surreptitiously adjusting his mask. He looked… big. Still just as big as the day he’d rescued her.
“Is this your sex dungeon?” she asked him, leaping off the exam table she’d been lying on. “Did you take me to your sex dungeon?”
“I don’t have a sex dungeon,” he assured her.
“Then it’s your…” She looked around some more. It was filled with bat paraphernalia, like Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum. But there was a unity there, like they were all reflecting the same psyche. Schizophrenic, sure, but an ethos of sorts… “Bat… cave?”
“Batcave.” Batman looked around, as if to make sure they were in a cave. “You can go back to calling it a sex dungeon.”
“No, Batcave, that’s catchy…” She found her mask on a stalagmite and pulled it on, quickly securing it. “Is this the part where you sing The Music of the Night to me?”
“I’m tone-deaf.”
“And even if he weren’t,” came a voice, British accent, old and dignified, “Andrew Lloyd Webber? I think not.”
Barbara turned to see… a butler. Bringing her lemonade. Yeah… “And what’s your story, Jeeves? Does every superhero have a dignified English butler?”
“Yes. I meet up with Superman’s butler every Friday for tea and crumpets.”
“Okay, okay, sure…” Barbara nodded frantically and pointed at both in turn. “Scourge of evil… his butler… got it. So is this the point where I go through an initiation ritual, swear an oath, get cybernetic implants…”
“You can go home. And study.”
“Study… bat-criminology?”
“Regular criminology would be just fine, dear,” the butler said. “Lemonade? I’m told the sleep-gas can be a tad dehydrating.”
“I am feeling a bit parched,” Barbara replied, reaching for a glass. “Thanks.” She drank. “This is great. Do you use real lemons?”
“Freshly squeezed, ma’am.”
“Alfred, why don’t you attend to another duty?” Batman said shortly.
Alfred nodded stiffly and bustled off, leaving her alone with him. Barbara abashedly pulled her cape tightly around herself.
“Do you know where we are?”
Barbara shook her head.
“This is the medical bay. The butler is also a medic.” He flipped a switch, lighting up an X-ray sheet. “These are bones I’ve broken.” He picked up a jar full of deformed metal, like coins left on a train track. “These are bullets and shrapnel he’s pulled out of me.” He opened a small refrigerator. Inside were rows and rows of red sacks. “This is the blood we use for transfusions. We replenish it twice a month.” He slammed the door shut. “I know the appeal this lifestyle has. But it’s not for you. If you want to help Gotham, be a cop.”
Barbara snorted. “My dad won’t let me,” she said peevishly.
“I’m not offering you choices here. Put the costume away or I’ll tell your father who you really are.”
Batgirl clenched her teeth. “Do that, I’ll tell him who you are.”
“You have no idea who I am.”
“You’re six foot two, you live in a cave which must be documented, you have an English butler named Alfred, and you have a Waynetech Delphi-class supercomputer. Only fourteen of those exist and most of them are running small countries. How long would it take you to solve this mystery, Sherlock?”
Batman stared at her. She would’ve expected a reaction. It was kind of creepy, actually.
“You’re not gonna talk me out of this. You want to take responsibility, take responsibility for my training. I’ll stay off the streets until you think I’m ready, I’ll follow any order you give. Just let me—you know how my father is. You helped make him a target. Let me help keep him safe. Please. You don’t know what it’s like to look at your mother and know she’s wondering if her husband will come home.”
Batman was motionless, but he did seem to sway, as if the cold draft was pressing on him. He took out another capsule.
“You’ll wake up at home. I’ll have an answer for you then.”
***
Barbara slept. She did it with her arms wrapped around herself, hair lying across her face and stirring with each breath.
“She’s not like me,” Bruce said. “She’s an innocent. I’m supposed to be protecting people like her.”
Alfred finished off her glass of lemonade, then washed it out in the sink. “Even the innocent have a right to defend themselves. You take that away, you’re no longer a guardian, you’re a dictator.”
“But it’s my mission. I took it on so people like her wouldn’t have to.”
“It’s the mission of everyone who loves peace and loathes evil. You must’ve known that to truly win back Gotham, at some point the Batman has to stop being a legend and start being a movement.”
Bruce picked up Batgirl’s mask, feeling out its rough homemade contours. Then he pulled it over her face, brushing the hair out of its way. “I’ll train her. I’ll work her so hard that she’ll get bruises just hearing the word Batgirl.”
“And if that doesn’t discourage her?”
Bruce pressed a Batarang into Barbara’s hand and wrapped her fingers around it. “Then I start a movement.”
***
Barbara woke up slow. It was all a dream… or was it? she though obligingly as she saw her costume on under the covers, a Batarang in her hand. There was a note attached to it. It read: ‘Practice makes perfect.’
“YES!”
Someone knocked at the door, followed a half-second later by her father barging in anyway. That was just enough time for Barbara to whip her mask off and pull the covers up to her chin. “Daddy? You’re interrupting my beauty sleep.”
“Sorry, angel. Got home late and I didn’t know if you were still up.”
“Just a little good old-fashioned insomnia.” She pulled her gloves off under the sheets and brought her hands up to bunch up her pillows. “So what’s up?”
“Nothing much. Your mother was straightening up your room when your cell-phone rang.”
Oh no.
“She picked it up to tell whoever was calling that you weren’t home. There was a boy she didn’t recognize asking for you. When she asked who was calling, he hung up.”
“That is weird. Maybe he thought he had a wrong number,” Barbara suggested.
Her father sat down at the foot of her bed, cinching the sheets and inadvertently exposing her yellow boots. She kicked them off, then pulled them under the covers.
“Barbara, I know you’ve reached that age where you’re interested in boys and boys are… interested in you.”
Barbara chuckled. “Dad, that happened a while back.”
His eyes went wide. “Which, the you interested in boys or the boys interested in—never mind. I also know you haven’t been lucky in love.”
“Dad!”
“Simple fact, Barbara. But I hope that if you found a boy who respected you and cared about you, you’d feel comfortable sharing that… great news with your mother and I.”
”Yeah, of course… if it was serious.”
Gordon tilted his head to one side. “Serious?”
“You know… if we’d been on a few dates, if we had good chemistry…”
“Sure, sure… just… how far is ‘serious’, basewise?”
“Dad!”
“Second base? It’s second base, isn’t it? This is the 21st century, I can live with second base.”
“Serious is not any base! Serious is…” she smiled a little. “Serious is someone I really like and think I might want to spend the rest of my life with.”
Gordon smiled. “That’s nice, hon.” He frowned. “Because there aren’t any bases on a relationship that isn’t serious, right?”
“Dad, you are seriously killing me.”
“The hitter has balls coming his way, but he just keeps striking out. He is going back to the dugout and he is getting traded to another team next fall.”
“Dad, no one is even playing. The game is called on account of rain.” And one team forfeited.
“That’s good. Because if someone tried to steal home, I might just have to beat them with a baseball bat… that’s not a metaphor.” He patted her stomach, accidentally feeling her utility belt.
“Oh, I bought one of those new belted nightgowns,” Barbara explained quickly. “They’re all the rage!”
“No wonder you have insomnia.”
He left, finally, but Barbara didn’t want to take off her costume. She wanted to sleep in it, bathe in it, kiss Dick in it. She was a superhero.
